mai said:
That's what I've been waiting for =)
@alanshearer Though I'm not sure if "dying" is a right word, but what impur1ty said, all platforms are pirated. My take on this...
There's a common believe that piracy is source of the problem. I believe it's not, not entirely. Piracy is an effect of a bigger problem, not a cause. Usually people are reffering to PSP demography, when speaking about it's piracy. According to John Koller's interview he gave to Wired this year, 40% of PSP demography are teens 13-17 y.o. (he didn't specify the details, but I suppose those're likely males), that's basicaly all info on PSP audience to date from Sony themselves afaik. Some people say this demography is likely to pirate since they have ability and knowledge to pirate and aren't fully independent financially, thus explaining relatively low PSP attach rate btw. That's a reasonable argument (but again some claim at the same time that "hardcore" buy more software - I'm confused)... but if PSP piracy is due to it's demography, therefore this rule also should work with other platforms, but it's not. According to last year's Nielsen research X360 dominant age group are male teens 12-17 y.o. (>30% time spent playing among all age groups), in other words pretty close to what Koller said about PSP demography. And despite being heavily pirated, X360 is an impressive software seller, it's attach rate is considerably higher than PS3 attach rate (and we all know the latter platform has no piracy at all). The problem with PSP is in something else than just demography that's "likely to pirate", X360 is doing well having the same people on board. What're those problems? I don't know. I assume overcrowded console market. Nowadays developers and customers have a wide range of platforms to choose from, like Wii, DS, X360, PS3 etc. PSP is literally like a fifth wheel, last choice of a developer to put a game on it, and last choice of a customer to buy something for it (not the case with Japan, since the most relevant consoles in there are DS and PSP). Other consoles are eating up PSP potential software sales, to be more precise, I reckon, those're X360 and PS3, since their dominant audiences intersect with PSP demography heavily. People are likely to spend their free money on X360/PS3 rather than PSP, while DS, yet another great software seller, unlike PSP, has an ability to differentiate oneself from home consoles with it's best-sellers aimed at wide range of ages and both sexes, unlike PSP once again. |
I agree with a lot you say, but imo the PSP fails to make it's niche in the gaming world because it's games are either on other platforms, ports of other games, or low budget games that aren't as popular as DS games. I'm not interested in most PSP games because I have them on my Ps3 or they're games that just look boring. This may lead people to play emulators on the PSP. Not only that but i'm not tech savy at all yet I can manage to pirate games for a PSP. I wouldn't even know where to start for the 360 or even the PS2. Until last year I didn't even know the 360 and PS2 were hackable. Yet almost everyone knows the PSP is pirated, it's a well known fact and it spreads through word of mouth making it seem less risky to break the system or do something stupid because everyone is doing it.
Lack of brand name games that people are willing to invest in unlike DS which has Mario/pokemon etc along can drive people to justify a pirated game as well. They weren't going to buy the game anyway so might as well pirate it.
Atm the handheld market is more crowded then it usually is as well. Not since the gamegear have I remembered 2 well known brands of handhelds on the market. For most people Handhelds are things used by kids on car rides or out with friends. With 2 handhelds 1 is most likely going to be neglected.
To me all these thinigs combined ruined the PSP software sales. Just an opinion but it all starts with piracy and snowballs because of other issues.
